Religion Dispatches
…around the tent entries, send notes, make phone calls, actually get their phone cords recharged, and send food and drink through every possible opening in the tent. As far as I could tell, it was always the men hanging around our tent and not the women hanging around the men’s tent. Pretty funny if you think about it. They were like lost puppies without their women. Yet patriarchy would have us think they are the masters. Around 2 a.m. I went dow…
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…. At the first, about a dozen volunteers spent the night making almost 300 phone calls and collecting pledges of volunteer support and contributions from 50 new supporters. Add that to the five other locations holding similar phone banks or collecting post cards of support, and I’m sure we easily got our 300 today. In addition, Equality Maryland hosted an interfaith meeting to mobilize supportive faith leaders. It was so great to see such a wonder…
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…an of American religion Catherine Albanese traces metaphysical religion or spirituality through New Age spirituality back through late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Theosophy and back to Spiritualism and Mesmerism. It’s a type of spirituality concerned with intuition, the therapeutic, and the flow of spiritual energy. More and more Americans are embracing metaphysical forms of spirituality as they move away from traditional religious affi…
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…nce between his stage and that of the protesters, but Makana sees the same spirit of aloha—a spirituality lost, like so many Hawai’ian protest songs, on many outsiders—as animating even angry dissent with love: It takes great courage and self-sacrifice to protest something that you feel is unjust and is causing harm to people… All I can do is look at what’s going on and envision in my heart that people come from a place of love and kindness—all pe…
Read More…come in His name to intercede for that very gift of life. Father, the same spirit of Herod who 2000 years ago attempted to exterminate the life of the Messiah today lives even America. The legislation that incorporates death and infanticide all under the capopy of reform. Today we ask for your spirit to convict the Senate and Congress, mobilize and activate the church to stand for righteousness and justice. We, black and white, brown and yellow, r…
Read More…angels” by distorting the words of Francis: Pope Francis said ‘do not seek spiritual answers in yoga classes’. Yoga is certainly a risk. There’s the spiritual health risk. When you take up those practices from other cultures, which are outside our Christian domain, you don’t know what you are opening yourself up to. The bad spirit can be communicated in a variety of ways. I’m not saying everyone gets it, or that it happens every time, and people m…
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…tant Reformation and its vernacular translation of the scriptures is a new spirit unleashed by both. The spirit of these two movements—Reformation and translation—was radically egalitarian and individualistic. The contention was that all people were capable of close reading, and the commitment was to individual Christians’ rights to make up their own minds about what the scripture said. These political commitments hinged in turn, on the recognitio…
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…us Christ of Latter-day Saints. Confused about which church he should join, 14-year-old Joseph Smith read James 1:5: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” Joseph therefore decided to ask God for wisdom. In response, God and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph and told him to join no church, for they were all false. Instead, Joseph would be guided to restore God…
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…hat coincidentally matches Paul, Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (also published in 1905) describes how for “Those people in possession of spontaneous, fun-living dispositions” the creed of endless material accumulation coupled with a disdain of pleasure was “absolutely meaningless.” Pittsburgh’s central creed was exactly as Weber described it, a cold city governed by a tough gospel, and so Paul absconds with his fat…
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…week, a survey of members of the parliament o the Faroe Islands found that 16 were in favor of marriage equality, 11 were opposed, and 6 did not answer. Recent elections led to a two-seat gain by the Social Democrats in the territory’s 33 member parliament; it was reported that the new government is expected to pass legislation allowing same-sex unions. “While its former colonial master Denmark was the first country in the world to recognize same…
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